6 More Things in Education We Need a New Name For

School is riddled with misnomers and obsolete terminologies. Relics of the days we are glad we no longer have to live. But as our world moves on, some words have stood the test of time. They bind us to power structures that lay at the very foundations of how we use knowledge and education. But the smell lingers, a smell that is so old we have gotten used to it. Here is another installment of words up for review:

Sit back and be educated.

Educated:

It comes from the Latin meaning “to have been instructed or led”. And since we scarcely use any other word to describe the cultivation of knowledge, we are stuck thinking that all valid intelect comes through a heirarchical process. But that is not the worst of it. We also use the word as an adjective in the passive form. One is not “educative” in the sense that they pursue knowledge. One is “educated” in the sense that knowledge is done to them by others. It also implies that the process is complete, in that the bearer has gained a status or brevet to their name. It gives validity to achieving a status, rather than the virtues of pursuing knowledge. This places a value on it that is extrinsic rather than intrinsic, leaving the student dependent on the affirmation of institutions. Now that you have been educated, you must be employed. You will be set free once you have learned to put the chains on all by yourself. We need a word for education that implies active pursiuit, not passive conformity.

Lecture:

Its what my mom gives me for not cleaning my room. Are they trying to make it sound boring? Not that lectures are necessarily boring. They have changed a lot since the days of professors mumbling words from the pages of a dusty volume. Lectures can be vibrant, extemporaneous presentations lovingly prepared by great minds. No need to make them sound like a drag. Even at GITMO they at least call it “enhanced interrogation“. Can’t these wordsmiths give lectures a better name?

The real question is why do we have to go to them? Cant we just watch a video of it? Unless there is some crucial interactive element of the lecture, or an amazing guitar solo that must be experienced live, it seems counter-productive for everyone to be present. The better professors are starting to put their lectures online. Other professors are insecure about soul-sucking magic-shadow recording devices and fads like the “internet”. They are not giving away the shop just like that. If they record their lectures, then what will we need them for? What indeed.

Textbook:

If not for its redundancy, or the extortionist price-fixing, then for its archaic presumptuousness. In any other industry, forcing participants of a compulsory program into buying a product of your own publication would be the sort of conflict of interest that deserves the attention of auditors.

Not in schools, though. Over the generations students have been numbed into submission. The end-users have no choice but to accept the word of a single hard-cover volume, at an uncompetitive price, and not last years version. No wonder so many graduates of our education system, despite their exposure to the broad concepts of science, still look to books like the bible for answers to modern questions. They have been taught to see the world in this way.

Kids hate lugging them around, college students hate having to buy them and nobody knows what to do with them when they graduate. They are literally dead weight; monolithic symbols of lazy, out-dated schooling. As online digital alternatives are so obviously accessible, the whole thing just comes across as a scam. Because it is.

Homework:

The work that follows you home. It is important to instill this truth upon children as early as possible: There is no place to hide from toil. Idle hands are the devils tools, so keep those kids busy working.

The very word “homework” gives permission for school to enter a child’s home. Its power and doctrine rule over private life. By teaching this value at an early age, it forever usurps the concept of personal freedom and leisure. Why not call it something more fun? Why not make it something more fun? Where is the power structure in that?

Pass:

The opposite of failure. No, not success. Just permission to pass through the next door in Kafka’s Castle. Behind the next door is the rest of your education. Technically you have the right to it, but it must be earned. Knowledge is a commodity held by the powers that be. It is not acquired by free association or self-determination. It is distributed based on a carefully monitored set of behaviours. Its value is determined by scarcity, not abundance. Education is indeed a classstruggle. And while public education works to flatten traditional social stratification and make knowledge available to all, it replaces a privilege based economy with a moral one. Your fate no longer solely depends on your ancestry, it now also depends on your conduct. We do not learn, we simply pass to the next level.

Fail:

Especially when used as a verb. To fail. Or worse, to be failed. When a teacher does it to you, it is not so much a result of their failure. More like punishment for yours. Failure is more than a blunt weapon of persuasion. It is a way of making sense of the world. To fill the failure quota is to satisfy the needs of a bell curve. Any sustained variation would raise concerns. As far as the school system is concerned, failure is necessary. Success depends on others failing.

They tell us that society needs people to pump gas. And that school is a way of finding a place for everyone. Except that jobs like pumping gas dont exist anymore. And every job like it has gone to Asia. Besides, we should be happy those jobs are gone. They are a terrible waste of a life. School should be setting the bar a little higher. Instead of expecting failure, schools should be trying to overcome it. Instead of abandoning those who fail in spite, schools should be finding the skills they have. That’s the job. It is not a processing center, it is a place of learning.

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5 thoughts on “6 More Things in Education We Need a New Name For”

Is it really that dark in your world? Joking aside, I haven’t heard lately of anyone calling his/her “presentation” a lecture, or a textbook a textbook. My students and I call them books, and unfortunately I made them pay a higher price (not a coin for my pocket, of course, even gave from my own pocket for those who are poor) for a great EFL Student’s Book and had a riot coming from the parents. They acted as I had tried to steal from them, because a set of quality books costs as much as the whole set of books for all other subjects together. So, I am a bloodthirsty money-sucker who helps Longman, OUP, CUP, or whoever,get rich!Eventually, they understood that I did my best to choose interesting texts and topics that would make both my students and myself enjoy the class. I agree about homework, but I think that still applies to the USA and some European countries with repetitive HWs and boring exercises with no point – if they do them, they simply practice the routine pattern and do not exercise their logical intelligence or brain for that matter. Interesting comments you’ve made there, though.

one more thing:”As online digital alternatives are so obviously accessible, the whole thing just comes across as a scam. Because it is.”In your world definitely, in my world we are lucky if we have a decent blackboard (not whiteboard, mind you) and a good chalk to start with. That is a logical outcome of having he worst minister ever and the worst state educational strategies. Still, kids here speak good English and that is usually their favorite subject. Must be in the air.

When it comes to providing an education that the next generation will value, online resources are essential. Whether you are here or in the former Yugoslavia. If parents are going to complain no matter what you do, you are better off saving yourself stress and money by going digital. They are not the experts, you are. There are countless programs to help struggling educational systems like http://www.soros.org/grants and http://one.laptop.org/ to name a few. Counting pennies to buy chalk and waiting for hand-me-down books from other schools is a losing battle. It will always keep you a step behind.

Pass. That is a terrible word isn’t it? I may agree with nearly your entire section on this word. Why is it that students can “pass” from one grade to the next even though they may not have learned much at all? On most K-12 grading scales, a 60% is passing. That’s nearly an F. The difference between one percentage point determines if a child passes or fails….determines if they learned or didn’t learn the material? I’m not saying teachers do not intervene in regards to students barely “passing”, but even so, passing doesn’t mean learning. Good point you’ve made.

You left out the most important word of all: “reform”. This term has been co-opted by the for-profit crowd… Ted Sizer is probably turning over in his grave to see bubble-test results the basis for “school reform”… ay yi yi!!!

"The more meaningful, the more deeply or elaboratively processed, the more situated in context, and the more rooted in cultural, background, metacognitive, and personal knowledge an event is, the more readily it is understood, learned, and remembered" Iran-Nejad, McKeachie, and Berliner

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“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”

-Frederick Douglass

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In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either. Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because they preserve the temple of schooling.